


A Final Gift

by fringeperson



Series: A Creation [2]
Category: Neko no Ongaeshi | The Cat Returns
Genre: Don't copy to another site, F/M, I had no idea what I was doing when I wrote this and I know better now, Old Fic, Sad, but I'm not going to deny its existance just because it's old and bad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-08
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:35:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27444994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fringeperson/pseuds/fringeperson
Summary: Alternate Ending 1 of A Creation.Haru lives a life of making art with all her heart, grows old, and finally dies.  This is her ending.~Originally written in '07
Relationships: Baron Humbert von Gikkingen/Yoshioka Haru
Series: A Creation [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2005096
Kudos: 5





	A Final Gift

**Author's Note:**

> I warn you again, this is Very Old Writing - and I haven't changed anything except a couple of typos.  
> Also, this is SAD.

"Muta, don't you get old at all?" Haru asked, straining her eyes to see the large cat as she paused in what would be her final work.

"Course I do, but cat's have nine lives, so until I get to my last one, I stay pretty much the same age," the fat cat explained, eating probably his last meal in the house of Miss Yoshioka.

"Good plan," she said as she bent to scratch him behind the ears.

She had led a good life, her paintings had been very popular, and she had returned to her University as an assessor and sometimes guest lecturer on what it meant to paint. She had talked of the things that motivated her to the students and seen confusion in the eyes of so many. Some lit up though, as her words struck a chord within them, and she spent some extra time with them.

Haru Yoshioka had never married, much to her mother's lamentations, but the earnings from her commissioned pieces had afforded her a large house, and the occasional work that she auctioned off paid for any other little things she wanted. Mostly, she just hung her favourite works on her walls – the very first picture, the one that had a strange life within the frame, had a room all to itself.

A knock at her door drew the old lady's attention from the cat on her kitchen floor and her work.

"Come in, I'm in the kitchen," she called.

"Miss Yoshioka," it was a young man. He carried a briefcase and wore a very smart suit of coal grey, with a fine silk tie of powder blue.

"Ah, Stephen, I'm glad to see you. I want to make sure that my will is in order," Haru said. The lad was a lawyer.

"You leave your house and all that is in it as a memorial to art created from the heart, a sanctuary for artists learning what that means and…" the boy read from the paper until he reached the end of it.

"Add please that any cats that come here should be fed," Haru said, smiling at the fatso she cared so much for. He had told her just that morning that Lune and Yuki were expecting their fifth litter. It occurred to the grey-haired old woman that those two were much more in love than Lune's parents had been, since they had only ever had him.

"Er, yes ma'am," the young man said, adding to the document.

Haru signed it and bid him good day, telling him to take a cupcake with him.

"I'm dying Muta," she told the cat. She hadn't before, she had wanted to wait until it was certain and near before she did. Her tone was matter of fact and not at all searching for sympathy.

He looked at her sharply.

"Says who?" he demanded.

"My doctor," she answered with a laugh in her voice. "I could be dead tomorrow, or perhaps next week, end of the month at the very latest. Would you fetch the Baron and Toto for me? I want the chance to say goodbye."

Muta was off like a shot. Surprised, the old woman checked the bowl he had left – it was cleaned out. Well, at least that explained why he hadn't kept eating after she had told him, but he was usually more sensible about not moving too quickly on a full stomach.

Refocussing on the task at hand, Haru took up her brush again, and swept it gently down the surface.

"He's really a softie you know, underneath that gruff outer exterior, he has a heart of gold," she told her work. She had been telling this last one her life story from the moment she began, starting with her parents, through her child hood, just the day before, she had recounted the entire tale of her adventures in the Cat Kingdom.

Taking out a little mirror, Haru studied her eyes behind the spectacles she now had to wear. She mixed the paints and took to task; the eyes were the last things she was doing.

It was done.

"Do you see all these?" she asked of this, her last work, walking through her large house with it in her hand. "These are all a small piece of how I feel about the Baron, a mere snapshot of a thousand emotions."

Through the entire house she went, explaining the story of every picture, hearing the songs and feeling the touch all over again as she went, listening to the whispered words of two who were in love, even though they couldn't ever be together.

The garden was the last place she went, walking between the roses and lavender, down to the bottom of the garden, where she rested on a stone bench.

"But you aren't like those paintings," she said, looking at the last thing she would ever pour her heart into. "You aren't a restricted snapshot of an emotional memory. You, my kitten, are Haru Yoshioka, and you will be able to love the Baron as I could only dream to," said the old woman, giving that last, vital ingredient to her creation that it might have life – a name.

"Haru!" a voice cried from the top of the garden.

The old woman recognised it, the cat-like doll in her hands did not, but turned towards it even so, something within her telling her that she should, a memory that the old woman had given her.

"I'm in the garden," she called back, a sad smile on her face. She had not told Muta all of the truth: she was dying, yes, but she knew for certain that she would not even see the sunset on this day. Her body told her this more certainly than her doctor did. She had called him earlier that day; made an appointment that he should come by for afternoon tea and a last checkup.

"Haru," the Baron said, running down the garden path.

"That's you now, kitten," Haru said to the doll beside her. "I just wanted to say goodbye, and now I have, don't stay and watch an old woman die."

The Baron stared at the old woman. It was hard to believe that she had once been the young woman, so full of life, that he had fallen in love with, and his heart ached to see her like this. When she turned to a small figure beside her, however, the Baron caught his breath. There was his Haru, the kitten from the painting that hung on his wall.

"I won't say goodbye," he said, taking the hand of the kitten. "I'm not really losing you," he added, looking up at the old woman even as he held the girl.

The old woman smiled and told them to go, with her blessings. She kissed each of them between the ears and wept for their happiness, she loved the Baron so dearly.

Toto hopped up on the bench and stared at the old woman, utterly disbelieving, until she kissed him also on his beak and asked him to take care of her kitten.

Muta said that he would stay until nightfall, and Haru thanked him, shooing the creations away back to the refuge, back to the Bureau. They had no business facing death, as those who lived mortal lives all had to face death.

When at last she collapsed, and there was no life left in her, Muta wept in the privacy of her garden, mewling wretchedly that such a beautiful life had to come to such an end. At the Bureau, however, there was happiness. Certainly, there was melancholy at the thought of Haru Yoshioka passing, but the Baron was finally able to hold _his_ Haru, and she loved him as her maker had shown her how.

So it was that Juliet died, but Romeo did not, for Juliet had left for him another, just like herself, but that was able to love him as he deserved – fully, and without hindrance or reserve. How could there be anything but happiness?


End file.
